They’ve held each other together through deaths, births, beginnings and ends; through surgeries and boo-boos. If you ask them, it’s because they don’t know any other way.

Four generations of mothers, all living in Midland, have passed down parenting secrets and the traits while sharing a strong bond that has grown through the decades. Evelyn Thorton, 84, is the mother to Jan Anderle, 61, grandmother to Kimberlee Hughett, 37, great-grandmother to Ariel Terrett, 20, and most recently the great-great-grandmother to 14-month-old Aubrelyn Terrett.

The lineage is as old as a box of worn costume jewelry kept at Thorton’s house that has been played with by her daughter, her great-great-granddaughter and everyone in between as her family grew. The colorful strands of beads are so special to the family that baby Aubrelyn recently sported them in a professionally-taken photo with the wooden chest in the background.

Thorton married at the end of World War II and moved to Midland in 1958, well after the birth of her son and daughter. She remembers arriving in Abilene for college and having to learn to use a telephone in order to call the taxi. As she watches great-granddaughter Terrett coming back from shopping trips with bags loaded full of clothes for her daughter, Thorton remembers having only two or three changes of clothes for her kids.

“It’s quite different now than it was then,” she said.

Thorton’s son ended up being the only boy in a long string of women, as Anderle, Hughett and Terrett all have given birth only to daughters.

“This family will never have a boy because the women in this family are too damn strong for a boy to come around,” Hughett said, laughing.

All of the women have been single mothers at some point in their lives, at different ages and under different circumstances. Hughett gave birth to Terrett at the age of 16 just after dropping out of high school, then moved to Houston. She took her GED five days after turning 17 and returned home when she was 24 to pursue her nursing degree in the Permian Basin. Anderle welcomed her daughter with open arms and refers to it today as one of her proudest moments as a mother.

“We’re there for each other, through thick and thin,” she said.

Terrett also was a young single mother when her daughter Aubrelyn was born, and she just returned to Midland College to finish her prerequisites. She hopes to follow in her mother’s shoes and study nursing at Odessa College. Taking on a college degree while caring for her 1-year-old seemed like a no-brainer for the girl who grew up in the shadow of independent women.

“It wasn’t really one of those heart-wrenching, ‘I’m a single mom’ things,” she said. “I mean, they all did it, and they survived.”

With an independent spirit comes a headstrong attitude in the family, which has seen plenty of “knock-down, drag-out” fights in its day among the younger generations. They always make up, though, because they still rely on each other.

“I was a single mom most of (my daughter’s) life, but I wouldn’t say that was a struggle,” Hughett said. “That was probably the best part, because she’s my best friend.”

The women also credit Anderle’s second husband, Chuck, with pitching in to bring a sense of harmony to a family of young girls. He had been a bachelor for 40 years before the two got married and went from serving as a commanding officer of a Hawk missile battery in the Marines to ironing dresses and putting hair in ponytails.

Taking care of each other always has been a family-wide effort; Anderle practically raised her two daughters and Terrett as sisters, and having mothers and grandmothers in town gives the women built-in baby-sitting support. They’re together for every birthday, every holiday and eat Thorton’s black-eyed pea soup every New Year’s. It’s hard for them to comprehend having birthdays without everyone in tow, or a Christmas that doesn’t take place in five different places over three days.

“I don’t think we know any better,” Ariel said as the women burst out into laughter.